Teach a Man To Fish
by REGINA THOMAS
in Fall 2023
Vincent Hunter, unguarded, 2012
It was Geneve’s idea that I should come home with her to New Mexico for Christmas. In my opinion the invitation had felt a bit too early in our relationship. And I say that even though in retrospect I can acknowledge that I may have been subconsciously fishing for the invitation all along.
I’d seen Geneve around the marketing agency where we both worked, but she had always seemed so unapproachable in her flowing peasant tops and jeans—her long, curly dark hair always in the same neat, single-plaited braid going down her back. Once I’d held the door open for her as we’d both exited our office building and had been able to what I hoped was subtly take in her arousingly natural scent of fresh lemons and honeysuckle. From that brief moment onward, I’d known that I had to get closer to Geneve, and had continued to observe her from afar, waiting for the perfect time and necessary confidence on my part to make contact. In early December I finally found my opening the night I got the courage to strike up a conversation with Geneve at our office holiday party.
We’d spent the whole evening talking to each other in the corner, discovering we both had similar interests in music, realizing that we had in fact been at the exact same Robert Glasper concert in Oakland a month earlier. As the party started to show obvious signs of winding down, Geneve surprised and delighted me with her directness.
“You wanna get out of here, Jordan? We can go back to my place, throw something crunchy in the air fryer, maybe get weird and touch on each other.”
“I thought you’d never ask.”
After our first night together, Geneve and I had gotten into the routine of hanging out most evenings after work and all weekend, meeting in front of the very office doors I had first held open for her months earlier. It was the Sunday before Christmas and three weeks since the holiday party. We were already in a routine, so to speak, back at my place listening to records after a glutinous feast at the hot pot restaurant nearby.
“I’m heading home to New Mexico, so I don’t think we’re going to be able to hang out for a bit.”
“Santa Fe?” I guessed, recalling that she had mentioned New Mexico as her place of origin, but couldn’t remember the exact location where she’d grown up.
Geneve snorted.
“No, outside of Taos, a little place called Tres Piedras. It’s soo beautiful and quiet, nothing like SF.”
As if for effect, the sound of a bus unloading in front of my apartment belted loudly from outside of the bedroom window that was propped open.
I instantly felt jealous, as my current Christmas plans were anything but beautiful and quiet. I’m the second youngest of four boys. Every year I made the short drive down to Hillsborough to stay in the house I grew up in, fending off the same questions from my three already married brothers, their wives, my mom, dad, and various other relatives who wanted to know why I wasn’t blissfully married like the rest of them.
Every year my loveable but very controlling mother, Patricia, provided us with a color themed dress code, requiring everyone to don the same matching monochrome sweaters, a la the Weasleys from Harry Potter, with the penultimate moment being her carefully curated family photo with everyone clad in said sweaters. Every year someone got too drunk and/or just too annoyed with Mom’s bossiness, and all hell broke loose. The worst year was when she decided to have us all wear white sweaters and served coq au vin for dinner. That had been the only year in memory that no photo was taken for next year’s Christmas card.
I told Geneve as much as we lay in her bed, and she cracked up laughing as I detailed how last year my parents’ Pomeranian, Penny, had gotten her own shit all over the white doggie sweater my mom had put her in.
“Yeah, that does sound rough. Why don’t you just come home with me to New Mexico. Me and my mom don’t even really celebrate Christmas now that Dad’s gone. He was the Christian in the household, so it should be pretty chill.”
There was a beat of silence that permeated through the air when Geneve made the suggestion. It was as if we were both processing the fact that we thought her invitation was too soon for such a new relationship. But at the same time, we both couldn’t stand the idea of being apart for the next week.
I told her as much. That even though I was thirty-four years old, I couldn’t remember a time in my life that I’d spent Christmas away from my family. I was definitely ready to change that with her.
From the moment Geneve and I deboarded the plane in Santa Fe, I felt as if I’d entered a completely different world than the one we’d left behind in California. Unlike SFO, the airport we’d flown out of with its many restaurants, stores, wine bar and yoga studio, the Santa Fe airport reminded me more of a Greyhound bus station. It had no bars, just vending machines and a sandwich shop, as well as actual outdoor seating next to the takeoff strip where you could presumably just sit and relax until it was time to board.
Carly, Geneve’s mom, met us at the airport in an old, dusty white pickup truck, and I spent the whole drive from the airport to Tres Piedras staring out the window, eyes glued to the tableau surrounding me. The terrain of the high desert was greener, fuller, and lusher than the Mars-esque red oblivion I had expected to encounter. As we all three sat crammed in the front seat of the truck’s cab, Geneve sat in the middle fast asleep, using my shoulder as a headrest. She had graciously given me the window seat, and I sat super alert, having slept the entire red-eye in from SF.
My new surroundings seemed so fresh and foreign in comparison to where we had just come from, and I told Carly as much as she drove. As I stared out the window, I couldn’t help but comment on the various traffic signs I’d never seen before on California roads that seemed especially uniquely New Mexican in nature. Carly, who had come off as a bit stoic at our initial introduction, slowly started to warm up to me as I asked her to elaborate on the meaning behind the signs we passed. She explained why in certain situations the "Engine Brake Use Prohibited" sign made sense from a driving perspective and that the meaning was obviously self-explanatory with regard to the traffic sign depicting a car with a black boulder precariously hovering above the top of the car at a sharp forty-five-degree angle.
“That has to be the most random one I’ve seen so far,” I said, pointing as we zoomed by a yellow, diamond-shaped traffic sign that contained the outline of an all-black deer rearing upward to stand proudly on its back hindquarters.
“If you think that one’s crazy, you should see the signs they have all the way down in Roswell,” Carly said, taking a puff from the cigarette she had lit after thankfully rolling down the truck window. In her side profile she most looked like Geneve, who while darker and taller than Carly shared the same large, almond-shaped eyes, clear, broad forehead, and dangerously high cheekbones.
“Oh really?”
“Yah, they’ve got traffic signs on the side of the roads down there that show a little alien saucer hovering right over a cow.”
“So do they have them at like different locations to mark all those alleged alien abductions?”
“I wouldn’t know about all of that.”
“So you’ve never been fishing?” Geneve asked, genuinely amazed in a way that gave me pause. It was the first time in our short relationship that I’d ever seen her shocked by anything. Geneve was always so laconic and relaxed, as if she’d seen everything and nothing could surprise her. Me, on the other hand, I was constantly being shocked by any new, unanticipated occurrence in my everyday life.
“What can I say. I’m a city boy, but I’m ready to learn if you’ll teach me.”
Since we had decided that I was coming to New Mexico, Geneve had been raving about these fry bread fish tacos that her mom made every Christmas. I, a Californian through and through, had no idea what fry bread was but had immediately been schooled at dinner the first night we had arrived at the squat, reddish-brown, adobe-style house where Geneve had grown up. Carly had prepared a fresh batch of fry bread as part of the chicken and mole dinner we had that night. The texture and flavor of the fry bread was amazing: pillowy soft, an almost funnel-cake-level richness, with a crisp outer layer and carb-loaded, buttery goodness in every bite.
It was three days before Christmas, and Geneve had informed me that it would be our responsibility to obtain trout for the fry bread tacos, and ideally we would go to the Rio Grande nearby to catch said trout.
“But what if we don’t catch anything?”
“Don’t worry, I know the perfect spot, and I’ve got the perfect beginner pole for you to work with. If we head out early tomorrow, we should be able to get at least one or two nice-sized fish. If nothing bites we can just try again the next day, and the day after that. Worst-case scenario we grab some trout from Albertsons down the road. It’s all easy peasy, Jordan, don’t worry.”
On our first day of fishing, Geneve took me to a spot on the Rio Grande about ten minutes from Carly’s house. Beautiful, quiet, and full of luscious green scenery and mountains as if we’d entered a postcard photo frozen in time. The beginner’s fishing pole Geneve gave me was hot pink, while she used an old wooden pole that she told me had been her father’s. Geneve patiently taught me how to string my pole with fishing wire, making it more appetizing to the fish by adding two worms as bait, and my favorite part, the rainbow shaped motion of casting off the pole into the water. Then we sat for a bit in a comfortable silence, perched on a set of elevated rocks overlooking the active stream moving southward, fishing poles resting in our hands. It was colder than I expected it to be, and I was grateful I had heeded Carly’s warning to bundle up.
“Like I know living in the Bay is dope, but I can’t believe you decided to leave all of this,” I said, pointing outward, using my free hand to gesture at the sparkling blue water and the impressive rock formations that surrounded us. On all sides sat the San Juan Range of the Rocky Mountains, with its snowy, white-tipped peaks peeking out at the highest points of elevation.
“I mean have you seen any Black people since we’ve been here?”
“Now that you mention it, no, I haven’t.”
“Well, I moved to Oakland because I figured it was the best way to be around Black people. It was either that or move to Atlanta or go to an HBCU.”
“Maybe join a step team.”
“Exactly. Also I’m legit surprised you know about step teams. I can’t say growing up here half Black, half Indian was especially hard. My mom’s tribe, our tribe,” Geneve said, correcting herself, “they’re very accepting, but I always felt like there was this other side I was missing out on. Like the culture here for the Taos Pueblo people, my people—it’s ancient and documented and I understand and know all about it. But the older I got, especially after Dad died, the knowledge I had about my ancestors started to feel really unbalanced. Like how could I know so much about my mom’s side, but on my dad’s side, I didn’t know much besides the few times we took short trips out there for the holidays.”
“I think that actually sounds pretty hard. So you’re saying you moved to Oakland for like some sort of ancestral heritage rebalancing act, to learn more about your other half?”
“Exactly! Also Dad had always hyped up his time at college at Berkeley in the seventies as like the most life-changing experience he’d ever had. Those first couple of years after he was gone, I would have done anything to have a positive, life-changing experience, something to knock me out of the sadness loop we were in. I wanted to walk the streets he’d walked as a boy, experience the same sights and sounds the same way he’d experienced it, as, I guess, a way to feel closer to him.”
I knew what Geneve was talking about. Her mom, Carly, was nice, a bit taciturn and quiet, but she had a gray cloud hanging over her that wasn’t just the cigarette smoke. Carly had the air of someone stuck in stasis, a prisoner of the sadness loop Geneve was talking about. It gave their house a stillness that was, honestly, a bit sad, but also understandable. Geneve’s father Earl after a long battle with pancreatic cancer had died in the house after being brought home for hospice care during Geneve’s freshman year of high school.
“I get it, definitely makes a lot of sense.”
“I wish he was here to meet you. He would have given you a hard time at first, but I think he would have really liked you a lot. When I got into Berkeley, Mom reached out to my dad’s side of the family. We hadn’t really been in much contact since his funeral. My grandma offered me a place to stay at in her house in West Oakland, and the rest was… Oh shit!” shouted Geneve, switching gears as she stood up to dig in against the strained tension she was now experiencing with her fishing pole.
“I think I’ve got a bite,” Geneve said. “Now, J, watch me real closely; this is how you reel a fish in.”
The morning of Christmas Eve I hopped out of bed bright and early at around 7 a.m., wide-eyed and bushy-tailed as I always wake, reflexively creeping quietly out of bed in an attempt to avoid waking Geneve, though I was starting to realize it would take a lot to wake Geneve. Since we’d been here, she’d averaged an impressive ten hours at least of sleep per night, and that’s not even counting naps. Carly was an early riser like me though, and the increasingly familiar smell of cigarette smoke and coffee hit my nostrils as I left Geneve’s bedroom for the bathroom. After I finished, Carly and I sat in comfortable silence at the small kitchen table drinking multiple cups of black coffee as she laconically chain-smoked, blowing out the opened window behind her, CNN humming softly in the background from the old kitchen TV.
We’d gone fishing yesterday for the second day in a row, and still no success, at least not on my part. Geneve had caught one medium-sized trout the first day, while I still had nil catches. Obviously Geneve was going to catch more fish than I was; she’d been fishing since she was a little girl. Something would work out today, it would have to. Today would be different, I told myself in an attempt to keep the competitiveness at bay for a bit longer.
“Geneve, let’s go down to the river for a bit,” I said to her limp blanket covered body once I returned back to the bedroom.
“Nooooooo,” said Geneve, like a petulant child, eyes still closed, as she grasped onto the comforter that engulfed her, pulling it over her face so that only the very top of her untamed mahogany hair peeked out from under. I’d noticed the only time I got any dramatic energy from Geneve was when she was awoken from her sleep. The angry turmoil she exhibited as she was forced to wake reminded me of the temper tantrum of a child, but in a cute way.
“But today’s my last day to finally catch a fish.”
“Mom brought two big ones home from Albertsons, and we have the medium sized guy I caught.”
“Aren’t you the one that said these fish tacos taste the best when you catch the fish yourself? You promised me a communion with nature today, so let’s go.”
The trout I finally caught was a thing of beauty. Approximately ten inches long, three to four inches wide, at least a pound and a half in weight with flowing red gills and wet eyes that blinked furiously up at me when I pulled it out of the water with Geneve’s help. The trout—I decided to name him Barry—wasn’t silver like the trout Geneve had caught; instead it was a muted almost greenish yellow, its entire body from midsection to tail, plus upper fin covered in the signature bespeckled mahogany spots that covered all trout. According to Geneve, what I’d caught was a cutthroat trout, which was a rarer species of trout than the rainbow trout she’d caught. She pointed out that you could tell it was a cutthroat trout based on its color, and also by the fact that it didn’t have a wide reddish stripe extending from the trout’s tail to gills.
There’s this photo of Geneve and me taken by Carly (at Geneve’s insistence) from Christmas lunch, after we’d slept in and exchanged the simple gifts we’d gotten each other. We’re both sitting at the rickety, square dinner table that’s covered in an old red-and-white checkered tablecloth, our fry bread fish tacos perfectly dressed with guacamole and other fixings displayed on bright orange plates. My arms, plate in hand, are thrust outward as if making an offering for the camera. Geneve is practically glowing next to me with a large grin full of even white teeth, hands resting on my shoulders as she leans in toward me. In the photo, the smile on my face is so pronounced that when Geneve first sent it to me, for a brief moment I didn’t recognize the man in the photo. He seemed too happy, too full of a jubilation I’d never recognized myself as being capable of experiencing until I finally had photographic evidence.
I spent a long time in bed that night staring at the photo on my phone, until I made the decision to add in bright red, heavily blocked letters the words “Happy Holidays” before sending it in a group chat to my entire family back home in California.
Regina Thomas is a writer based in Pacifica, California. Her mission statement as a writer is to create the sort of works that were missing from the bookshelves when she was a young Black girl in Kentucky always maxing out her checkout limit at the local library. Her work has been published in The Courtship of Winds,Packingtown Review,The Penmen Review, and Press Pause Press.